No the Rangers don't build around young players... but successful franchises do.

Look at Pittsburgh both in the 90's and now, the Devils (built around Stevens, Niedermeyer, Brodeur, when they were young), Detroit built their team in the 90's around young Russians, the capitals now, the Kings now (who will be dominant in about 2 years), the blackhawks now, the coyotes now, Philly now, Montreal now do i need to give more examples.

we don't have a winning team right now... this team is in no way shape or form a SC contender, and maybe not a playoff team. We did a half ass job at rebuilding and now we have a team of 4-5 guys in win now mode and the rest of the team in win in 5 years mode. who do you think we should build around? This team isn't winning a cup in the next 3 years. Build around the people who will be hear 10 yrs+ not the ones who are gone in the next 3-4 years, or will be on the downsides of their careers in 3-4 years.

I'd be comfortable building around youth if we were drafting in the top 5 for the better part of a decade like the Pens.

You have no idea if we have a winning team now. You're basing your entire argument on statistics. This is a new team, and roster isn't even finalized. These players haven't skated a single minute together and you've already deemed them a failure; It's completely unsubstantiated.

You can compare players all you want and keep saying the players we acquired aren't as good as the ones we lost, but the fact is that no one has any idea how good they will be. The right linemates can make anyone look like a superstar, it's all about chemistry. We could see Gomez feeding Naslund all season while Naslund puts up 40 goals again. We could see Zherdev break 40 goals. We could see Redden become a Norris candidate. We could completely flop and finish dead last.

You can't predict the future, and determining this team will fail just because you don't like the way they look on paper is ridiculous.